1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to rendering devices and, more specifically, to a rendering device for processing images around a vehicle captured by image capture devices, and generating an image for display on a display device.
2. Description of the Background Art
Disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2000-67395 is a drive assistant device with a conventional rendering device incorporated therein. The drive assistant device is placed in a vehicle, and includes two wheel speed sensors, a computing unit, a graphic controller corresponding to the conventional rendering device, and a display. One of the wheel speed sensors takes charge of two wheels on the left side of the vehicle, and detects a travelling quantity thereof. As for the other wheel speed sensor, detected is a travelling quantity by two other wheels on the right side of the vehicle. Thus detected quantities are accumulated together by the computing unit, and based on the accumulated value, a radius of a circle traceable by the vehicle, when rotated, is estimated. Based on the estimated rotation radius, the graphic controller generates an image showing predictive trajectories on the road surface. The resulting image is displayed on the display.
Such a drive assistant device has two problems. First, a driver of the vehicle needs to be attentive, when parking, if any part of the vehicle with some height from the ground such as front and rear bumpers, mirrors, and fenders hits any object (e.g., other vehicles, wall) in a close range. However, the image generated by the graphic controller only shows predictive trajectories on the road surface. Therefore, with such an image on the display, the driver finds it difficult to determine if his/her bumper, and the like, is likely to hit any object therearound.
Second, when parallel parking, the driver may have a hard time to park his/her vehicle if the initial position thereof is not appropriate. If failed, the driver tries again all the way from the beginning. During that time, any information about trajectories so far tried but failed may help the driver not to try the same trajectories. However, displayed on the conventional drive assistant device are only the predictive trajectories on the road surface, the driver thus cannot learn from failure.
As such, due to those problems, the display image provided by the conventional drive assistant device is not driver-friendly enough.
Therefore, an object of the present invention is to provide a rendering device, a display image generated thereby being informative enough for the driver.
The present invention is directed to a rendering device for generating a display image for drive assistance, the device comprising: a first generation part for generating a surrounding image corresponding to an area surrounding the vehicle; a reception part for receiving a current rudder angle from a rudder angle sensor placed in the vehicle; a calculation part for calculating, based on the rudder angle received by the reception part, a three-dimensional predictive trajectory of the vehicle; and a second generation part for generating the display image showing the three-dimensional predictive trajectory calculated in the calculation part rendered on the surrounding image generated by the first generation part.
These and other objects, features, aspects and advantages of the present invention will become more apparent from the following detailed description of the present invention when taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.